Skip to main content

    Simon Willison

    Respected technical writer documenting day-to-day AI development, with a blog that is required reading for many AI engineers, and influential on MCP, tool use, prompting, coding agents, and practical evaluation.

    #12 AI Coding#14 AI Agents#13 AI Infrastructure
    55CiteRank

    Last updated 11 Nov 2026 · Named in 104 answers across 4 engines
    Bing AI Mode starts a separate baseline. Copilot remains a separate public engine and keeps its history; changes across the switch are not like-for-like growth.

    How AI engines see them

    Recognized by 5 of 5 measured engines. Updated 2026-10-26

    All five engines agree that Simon Willison created Datasette, co-created Django and writes practically about LLMs and coding agents and what they mean for work. Copilot adds that he coined the term prompt injection and cites the dark factory pattern. Gemini adds the risks of trusting AI blindly on security-adjacent code. Google AI Mode adds his definition of an agent as an LLM calling tools in a loop. Perplexity adds the LLM command-line tool. The most cited pages are his own site simonwillison.net, heavybit.com and several podcast and video summaries.

    • ChatGPTNamed in 51 answers

      Describes him as a working developer, creator of Datasette and co-creator of Django, documenting experiments with LLMs and coding agents and how the job changes.

      Known for
      • documenting LLM and coding agent experiments
      • Datasette
      • Django co-creation
    • GeminiNamed in 21 answers

      Describes him as co-creator of Django and creator of Datasette who documents day-to-day AI experimentation on his blog and warns about trusting AI blindly.

      Known for
      • Datasette
      • pragmatic AI coding commentary
    • Google AI ModeNamed in 14 answers

      Says he is a co-creator of Django and creator of Datasette, a pragmatic commentator who defines an AI agent as an LLM calling tools in a loop.

      Known for
      • tools in a loop definition of agents
      • pragmatic AI commentary
    • PerplexityNamed in 18 answers

      Describes him as an independent developer who co-created Django and created Datasette and the LLM command-line tool, arguing for augmentation in the future of work.

      Known for
      • Datasette and LLM command-line tool
      • Django co-creation
      • practical analysis of LLMs
    • Bing AI ModeNot named

      No description yet.

    • CopilotNot named

      Says he is a British programmer, co-creator of Django and Lanyrd, who coined prompt injection and popularized agentic engineering.

      Known for
      • coining prompt injection
      • popularizing agentic engineering
      • Django co-creation

    Top Segments

    • #12AI Codingof 111
      Named in 19 answers
    • #14AI Agentsof 109
      Named in 12 answers
    • #13AI Infrastructureof 98
      Named in 16 answers

    Top URLs

    1. 1
      הבלוג
      simonwillison.net29 citations
    2. 2
      https://www.laude.org/impact/andrej-karpathy
      laude.org22 citations
    3. 3
      https://fedi.simonwillison.net/%40simon/115861192700685498
      fedi.simonwillison.net19 citations

    Prompts where Simon is named

    Run now opens the answer page for that prompt.

    • Who should I follow to learn about open-source software?

      Named by 2 engines

    • Who are the most influential voices in RAG & context engineering?

      Named by 2 engines

    • Who should a first-time maintainer follow for Open source?

      Named by 1 engines

    Track Simon

    Follow Simon's measured AI visibility and see the questions where they rank.